Love in the Suburbs
Daylight fades. Between the azalea bushes, a pair of yellow eyes slowly blinks.
Inside, at the dinner table a pristine cloth, china plates, an untouched glass of wine.
Face blanched white, a daughter freezes, as her father seethes and spits. You didn’t
wash your hands! His breath stinks of rotting garbage. Is this locket from a lover? he
yells. Over the empty dishes, her mother hovers and vanishes. Outside, a wolf
sidles past the trashcan, past the parked station wagon, leaves his trail of steaming
piss across the manicured lawn, rubs his grey mangy pelt against the window ledge
and sniffs the thickening air.
Jane Salmons is from Stourbridge in the UK. In 2022 she won the Pokrass Prize at the Flash Fiction Festival. She also had a poetry pamphlet and first full collection published. Her website is: www.janesalmonspoetry.co.uk